Thursday, November 20, 2008

RED!

Okay, I'll admit it. I had a serious stash enhancement problem a few years ago. Right around the time I returned to knitting after a 17 year absence, I discovered the wonders of internet yarn bargains. Smiley's, Herrschner's, and eBay: the unholy trinity of excess. You have no idea how many $1 per skein bargains I snagged during that golden era. And oh the splendid by-the-hank goodies I found on eBay: mountains of chenille, skyscrapers of wool, buckets of acrylic. I had yet to develop a taste for the finer things. I was still positively thrilled to have enough yarn at one time in the same color to make an entire sweater instead of buying it skein by skein and praying it still existed by the time I reached the sleeves. (Which, come to think of it, is one of the reasons I stopped knitting way back when; the budget simply couldn't swing it.)

Anyway, I was poking around in the big storage closet in my office and found two artifacts from the aforementioned golden era that will make some gutsy knitters smile.

First up is a giant mound of red. I think it's wool but the info tag is long gone and I don't want to break off a piece and set it on fire to find out for sure. But it's very bright, very Christmas-y, and there's a whole lot of it. It's maybe the circumference of a fluffy medicine ball. It lacks discipline and will take a patient knitter to wrangle it onto a swift and wind it up but I think it'll be worth the trouble. (And dare I say better you than me? You should have heard me the other day when I was undoing Squirt's damage to the Rowan Cashsoft.)

Just send me an email with RED in the subject header and tomorrow night the RNG will pick a winner.